A Fiery End for Kosmos 1315 Over Hawaii

A vestige of a Cold War astounded beach-goers and Hawaiian islands residents Sunday night, as Kosmos-1315 reentered a Earth’s atmosphere in a thespian display.

Reentry of Kosmos-1315 prisoner by Joshua Lambus. Click here to see a full video.

The reentry occurred right around 11:00 PM Sunday night on Aug 30thlocal time (Hawaii is 10 hours behind Universal Time). Folks in a satellite tracking village had been following a likely reentry for some time, that was projected for Aug 31st during 10:56 UT +/- an hour. That puts a Hawaii sighting right during a commencement of a window.

“We were outside, about 11:00. we have a TV outward on a lanai (deck) and we had watched a 10:00 news, when we were only jacket it adult for a evening,” Hawaiian proprietor Lance Owens told Universe Today. “My mother sees this imaginary thing in a sky. Our initial outline was it looked like someone boring a “sparkler” opposite a sky like those aged spaceship movies. It took during slightest a notation to get opposite a skyline. It seemed to be violation adult right in front of a eyes. we did not hear any boom, yet a visuals were incredible!”

A close-up of a reentry of Kosmos 1315 from Sunday night. Image credit: Lance Owens

Kosmos 1315 (Sometimes listed as Cosmos 1315) was an electronic vigilance comprehension (ELINT) satellite launched from a Plesetsk Cosmodrome in a afterwards Soviet Union on Oct 13th, 1981. First grown in a late 1960s, Kosmos 1315 was a standard Tselina-D form member of a two-satellite Tselina ELINT system. Kosmos 1315 was launched atop a Vostok-2M rocket, a upholder for that still stays in circuit currently as NORAD ID 1981-103B. Kosmos 1315 was in a 533 x 574 km low Earth orbit.

Long-time satellite tracker Ted Molczan has been compiling a list of reentries that goes behind to a emergence of a Space Age, and records that this was a 256th reentry sighting he’s reliable in his cataloging effort.

“Objects launched by Russia comment for 205 sightings or 80 percent, followed by a U.S., that accounts for 40 sightings or 16 percent. China, Europe and Japan comment for a remaining 4 percent,” Molczan told. “Considering a immeasurable areas of a Earth that have been under-reported, a sum array of reentries seen during a Space Age substantially is between 500 and 1000, a vast infancy mislaid to history.”

This was a excellent instance of a classical reentry contra a standard fireball or meteor train. Satellites typically have a slower reentry velocity, and we can see this in several of a videos prisoner of a event. Most fireball captures come from confidence and dashboard cams (remember Chelyabinsk?) or cameras that are already adult and using recording another event, such as a unison or a football game. The famous Peekskill meteor in 1992 was prisoner in a credentials during a high propagandize football game. Remember, during Chelyabinsk, a really initial images of a eventuality were from dashcams; mins later, after everybody rushed to aim their quick deployed mobile phone cameras during a contrail, we got a recordings of a blast wave. The really fact that several folks grabbed their phones and managed to constraint a reentry in swell on Sunday night (how quick can YOU have your phone out, camera running?) speaks to a slow, noble span standard of a satellite reentry.

The position of Kosmos-1315 during 9:17 UT. Image credit: Orbitron

…and folks on amicable media mostly try to get in on a hype during a violation story involving a meteor sight or fireball event. Feel giveaway to try to be creative, yet trust us, we’ve seen ‘em all. Some ‘meteor wrongs’ (to counterfeit Meteorite Man Geoff Notkin) that typically get recycled and advertised as new videos are: a reentries of Mir, Hayabasa, a aforementioned Peekskill event, Chelyabinsk, and shade grabs from a film Armageddon.

“As is common with reentries, a few people reported a materialisation as a UFO. A integrate of witnesses viewed a intense fragments as particular qualification of some kind,” Molczan toldUniverse Today. “Satellite orbits closely follow a span of a Earth’s surface, and they continue to do so as they start their final skirmish during reentry. As reentry proceeds, quickness is mislaid due to drag, causing a skirmish to gradually turn steeper, yet to an observer, a suit appears to be scarcely horizontal. By a time an intent descends next about 30 kilometers, it will have mislaid scarcely all of a brazen velocity, and from there, any flourishing fragments will deplane roughly plumb to a Earth.”

This final skirmish is identical to what’s famous as ‘dark flight’ before to a meteorite impact.

And yet we customarily get a few high seductiveness reentries such as Phobos-Grunt or UARS each year, space junk is reentering worldwide weekly. The Aerospace Corp. keeps a using list of arriving reentries, and a See-Sat-L summary house is a good source of fast-breaking news.